Guide
Fenophone inside your DAW
You do not need a new workstation. The free one you already have — GarageBand on a Mac, Live Lite with your controller, the FL Studio trial — is where Fenophone's music lands, and where the plugin plays.
Why there is no "Fenophone DAW"
A workstation is a timeline, a piano roll, a mixer, a plugin host, and a hundred decisions you have not made yet. The blank canvas is the thing that stops beginners, and another blank canvas would not help. Fenophone is the opposite shape: an instrument that is already playing when you arrive, a Studio that turns captured takes into a song without a timeline, and exports that drop into any DAW at the tempo and key you set. The workstation you own is the right home for the rest — and the plugin brings the instrument into it.
The free DAWs, and what Fenophone gives each
- GarageBand (Mac). Drag the exported MIDI file into the workspace and each layer arrives as its own named region; drop the WAV stems beside them. GarageBand hosts Audio Units, so the plugin's AU build is the one it loads.
- Logic Pro. Import brings named regions with the tempo and key read from the file; the round trip is one of the five we test on every build. The Logic Pro page.
- Ableton Live Lite. The copy bundled with most controllers imports the type-1 MIDI as one named clip per layer. The Ableton Live page.
- FL Studio, Reaper, Bitwig. Tested round trips, each with its own page: FL Studio, Reaper, Bitwig.
Finish a song before you open the DAW
The Studio's Song mode is the beginner's arrangement tool: store a few scenes of the same layers — each scene remembers the mix and how the instrument is being conducted — and put them in order as steps with a bar count each. Press Play song and the sections change on the bar. Export the song and you get stems, a master, and a MIDI file that already has the shape of a track, so what you open in the DAW is a piece, not a loop. The Studio guide has the rest.
The plugin: the same instrument, inside
The VST3/AUv3 plugin wraps the same engine the browser runs: the Field in the plugin window, the dials as host-automatable parameters, project tempo sync, genres switching on the bar, and the state saved with your session. Its MIDI output mode lets any instrument in your project play the music Fenophone composes. It ships privately today — join the plugin waitlist and it reaches you as a one-time purchase, no subscription. An iPhone and iPad build, an AUv3 that runs inside GarageBand and Logic for iPad, is in development.
The four-step path
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Play in the browser first
Open the instrument, drag intensity and spread, and capture the first passage you like. Nothing to install, nothing to learn up front — the first minute is the whole lesson.
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Shape a song in the Studio
Press Studio. Stack your captured takes, store a few scenes — a quiet verse, a full chorus — and put them in order as steps: eight bars of this, sixteen of that. Press Play song and hear the sections change on the bar.
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Export into the DAW you already have
Export writes a standard MIDI file with one named track per layer, plus WAV stems, at the tempo and key you set. Drag them into GarageBand, Logic, Live Lite, FL Studio, Reaper, or Bitwig and keep building there.
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Then let the plugin bring it home
The VST3/AUv3 plugin runs the same instrument inside your DAW — synced to the project tempo, genres switching on the bar, its state saved with the session. It ships privately today; the waitlist is the way in.